Lacombe County believes they are prepared to handle the new 2020 provincial budget after taking pre-emptive actions to prepare for its arrival. 

“Lacombe County recognizes the challenging economic times the province is facing right now. We know we are going to have to make do with less. Based on this, I think the budget as I see it—and I haven’t had the chance to do a complete review of it—but really, I think that it is quite reasonable in that the impact to the Lacombe County is likely not going to be profound,” said Tim Timmons, Lacombe County Manager. 

However, Timmons noted that there will be some challenges ahead for ratepayers. 

“One of them is the amount of education property taxes. That’s going to be collected this coming year. Based on the information that we have, the tax rate for residential properties is going to increase by about 3.5 per cent,” explained Timmons. 

The county manager has no doubt the tax increase will not go unnoticed by taxpayers.

 One thing that will be challenging for the County will be the loss of grant funding through the Agricultural Service Boards Program and the Strategic Transportation Infrastructure Program (STIP). 

“There’s been a significant reduction in Agricultural Service Board Funding. So that’s funding that the province provides to rural municipalities to help out with their agricultural programs and initiatives. It appears that the total funding pool for that ASB grant is decreased in the order of about 27 per cent and if in fact, they’re going to be reducing our ASB grant, that’s going to translate into a decrease in grant funding of about $41,000.” said Timmons. 

Additionally, the STIP grant has been reduced by about $7.5 million. 

“We used that for upgrades and the replacement of bridge infrastructure. With that reduced funding pool, the level of funding that we are going to get for these initiatives is going to decrease as well,” added Timmons.

As of now, Lacombe County Council has not discussed how they will make up for the lack of grant money, but Timmons noted that swallowing up the cost or even a reduction in programming may be a result of the council’s future directions. 

The 2020 budget will implement a new RCMP funding model that will require small and rural communities to pay for a portion of policing costs. Timmons says County Council has been anticipating the increase of cost but has not yet come to a conclusion on how they will deal with it. 

“The province primed us quite well on the big issue of changing the RCMP funding model and that is going to have a significant impact on Lacombe County. In year one, I believe it’s going to cost us about a $402,000 hit on our bottom line. We still don’t know how we’re going to deal with that,” explained Timmons. 

Increases to that cost are expected to arrive in the coming years, which will be equally hard to deal with. 

“In year four of this new model, the requisition total for Lacombe County for RCMP services is going to be about $1.2 million. In the first year, I think certainly we can manage it without too many challenges, but come year four it could potentially become very problematic for us,” added the county manager. 

Timmons suggested the increased costs may either be absorbed by the County or that it may need to be compensated by ratepayers. However, nothing has been decided yet. Above all, he hopes that additional enforcement funding will translate to better service and safer streets.